I work at a tech company. Even though we have our own products sometimes (more than I’d like) we take consultancy projects. Basically we rent out our engineers and data scientists, hourly, I know it sounds like a particular profession that is often frowned upon but what we do is totally legal in most of the world. Any how, there’s a new project that we are working on with this other company. First there’s now contract or agreement that is signed. There are no timelines, no clear scope nothing, they don’t even know what what timeframe they want to launch the results of the project. It’s a nightmare, please guys if your company ever wants to outsource anything first sit together with your boss or colleagues and make sure you know what you want to go ask another company to get the job done. And if your plan is to use an external company or consultant to figure it out for you, then you have to be straight forward about it actually pay them for spending time with you and scope out the project and tease out the details.